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City of Nashua explores composting program

By Mathew Plamondon - Staff Writer | Jul 20, 2019

NASHUA – With the Nashua Environment and Energy Committee in the midst of a year-long campaign about waste reduction, Alderwoman and committee member Shoshanna Kelly said officials are closer to proposing a pilot program for city-wide composting.

With the topic headed to the Recycling Committee for an Aug. 15 meeting, Kelly said such a program will help the city on multiple fronts:

• Reducing the city’s carbon footprint;

• Curbing overall waste; and

• Saving money.

“We’ll reduce our waste and also our carbon footprint. I think that’s a huge win,” said Kelly, who is spearheading the initiative.

With the recent approval of a $6 million expansion at the Four Hills Landfill, Kelly said implementing a composting program would temper the need for the city to potentially invest more money toward expansion in the near future. This would lower the cost relative to waste going into the landfill, as well as the cost for maintaining potential growth.

“It would reduce cost in that we would be putting less in the landfill,” she said.

“If we’re reducing what goes in there, then we’re going to reduce how much we have to expand and maintain.”

Kelly mentioned the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose officials started with a pilot program similar to what she hopes to see. Kelly said since the start of their program in 2014, Cambridge has composted 1,800 tons of food scraps and reduced trash by 8%.

“Cambridge started with a 600-household pilot back in 2014,” Kelly said. “They expanded it from there because it was successful to 25,000 households.”

Doria Brown, the chairperson of the Environment and Energy Committee, agreed that such a program would be beneficial to the city regarding waste costs. She said an added benefit to the composting would be the ability for individuals to bring food back into the community and the possibility for the program to create jobs.

“If we are composting our food waste, it creates a closed-loop system,” Brown said. “It would ultimately return the organic nutrients back into the soil to create more food for the community.”

She referenced Grow Nashua’s recycling program as one of the possible ways that such return is yielded, while also creating jobs within that organization.

With education and understanding on how to compost, Brown said a citywide program would benefit Nashua by reducing waste and cost relative to the landfill.

While there have already been some potential concerns brought forth regarding the actual implementation of a composting program, including infrastructure, cost, smell and space, Kelly said all of this will be explored during the Aug. 15 meeting.

“One of the concerns was infrastructure. Do we have to buy bins to get this going?” Kelly said. “That’s one thing we’ll talk about when we go to recycling, how could it look, and what’s the return on investment.”

While city officials already collect compostable yard waste, Mayor Jim Donchess said before the city can proceed with any final composting program, cost will have to be considered. He said the city is already spending about $1 million on recycling.

“We already compost yard waste, and now we’re looking at adding kitchen waste,” Donchess said. “We’re beginning to look at that. It’s got to be examined in a lot more detail.”

Mathew Plamondon can be reached at 594-1244, or mplamondon@nashuatelegraph.com, @telegraph_MatP.

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